this too shall pass | Sleep is for the Weak

Perspective

Posted by Josie on May 9, 2011 in Fibromyalgia, Me | 10 comments

I’m laughing this morning. I’m laughing cause I can’t bloody walk. HAHAHA! Funny, right?

No really, it is. Haven’t you heard the joke? I don’t remember it exactly but it’s something like, how do you cure toothache. Why, chop your leg off, of course! Doubt you’ll be thinking about your teeth then!

Ha! Haha!

Ok, I’ll stop with the manic laughter. Because nobody has chopped my leg off, I’m just having the biggest Fibromyalgia flare-up that I’ve had in a long time. Maybe since before Kai was born actually. It’s hard to qualify sometimes, although it doesn’t really matter anyway. It hurts, a lot. That’s all you need to know really. Pain killers aren’t touching it, but then they rarely did.

In any case, I AM laughing. Because there’s nothing like a good dose of physical pain to get things in perspective, is there? And I mean that both ways round. I mean it in the sense that me moping around clutching my sore heart and bruised ego has come quite clearly into focus, given the reminder of what life was like just a few years ago, when EVERY day was like this, and instead of striding through the countryside, feeling sorry for myself and taking photographs like I did last week, I would have been pushed in the wheelchair that I lived in for such a long time.

Please Send Wine and Cake

Posted by Josie on Nov 28, 2009 in Uncategorized | 51 comments

*WARNING: In line with my honest disclosure policy and commitment to blogging with integrity, I should warn you that this a whiney post*

Kai is going through a phase.

At least, I think he is. It could be teething, it often is. I fear not, however, I fear that this is just HIM.

I never realised this about babies, before I had one that is. I figured that they grew and stuff (obviously), but I never realised THEY changed so much. Their needs, their personalities. That periodically they would become demon children from hell as they transitioned to a new stage.

Kai I think is in one such transition. After he started walking we had a month where he was absolutely delightful – everything was fun and exciting and interesting. We’d spend all day going on adventures and discovering the world from an upright position and all the many delights it had to offer – puddles, pidgeon chasing, running with wild abandon through the shopping centre and trying to steal things from shops. I loved it, and, as I always do I stupidly, rested on my laurels and thought “Ahhh this is lovely. THIS is what Kai will be like now. Life shall be good from now on”.

And then came this week.

This week where the my lovely, smiley boy was replaced with Lord of the Nazgul, complete with ear piercing shriek which he proceeded to unleash, with tears and biting and hitting and thrashing around, roughly every 7 minutes.

Here he is in all his glory:

NOTHING has pleased this boy this week. He doesn’t want to play, he doesn’t want to go outside, he doesn’t want to make dens on the sofa, or build things, or colour. He most certainly does not want to take a nap. All he wants to do is shout at me with nonsensical words, throw things, attempt to scale the furniture and get his mitts on every type of easily breakable thing in the house. Every trip to a public place has resulted in a prostrate, screaming child, and me trying to wrestle him, plank-like, into his pushchair by pinning him with my knee and fending off well-aimed kicks to my head. I am THAT mother, smiling wanly and embarrassingly, as the world looks on slightly pityingly obviously wondering why I seem unable to control my child and worrying that his head seems to be covered in rather nastly looking bruises (from throwing himself backwards and hitting it on every protruding edge in sight).

Our routine has gone to pot. Again. This is the other thing you don’t expect as a parent. You are told that routines are important for a child so you do your upmost to settle into a consistent rhythm of eating and sleeping. And it works, beautifully, for about 6 weeks. Two months max. Then you find they suddenly change the rules – they want to get up earlier, or aren’t ready for bed at the same time. They need less naps, or shorter naps, or more snacks. And you are left running to keep up.

I HATE these times. They never fail to make me feel incompetent, insecure, useless and doubt every single aspect of my parenting.

Of course, it will settle again, it always does. But in the meantime I am in my own personal hell and miserable with it. I’m still so tired anyway, with my blood pressure all over the place (turns out that’s why I keep falling over), and I’m having to spend my days wrestling with a small, ferocious ball of rage.

The worst thing is that he is always as good as gold when in the company of others, like his grandmas, so meaning they don’t really understand what all the fuss is about or why Ant and I periodically take on a grey, shrivelled look and look at our child slightly fearfully, worried he might ‘go off’ at any second.

God only knows what’s up with the child. I fear a lot of it is frustration – we had a similar patch just before he learnt to walk. He is obviously so desperate to communicate, babbling desperately and earnestly at every moment. Shaking his head and gesturing wildly. But what ever developmental thing that needs to ‘click’ to make talking possible just hasn’t happened yet. He struggles to formulate more than a handful of basic words although understands nearly everything you say to him. You can almost see him, trapped in this little body of his that hasn’t quite caught up to his brain. It’s no wonder he’s so angry really, I think I would be too.

Luckily time heals all ills, no doubt he WILL learn to talk eventually and this frustration will ease and all will settle again. Until the next thing of course.

And in the meantime, I’m left with this…